Critically Endangered
Townsend's Shearwater
Puffinus auricularis
Townsend's shearwater is a rare seabird of the tropics from the family Procellariidae.
The tubenose
Townsend's Shearwater is a tubenose seabird in the family Procellariidae (order Procellariiformes) — Puffinus auricularis.
Range and habitat
This species breeds around Cerro Evermann on Isla Socorro in the Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico, though formerly present on Clarion Island and San Benedicto.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The main threat to this species comes from feral cats introduced to Socorro in the early 1970s. The Isla Clarión was eradicated in 1988, when habitat and nesting sites were destroyed by introduced pigs, sheep and rabbits, the final of that competed against the shearwaters for nesting burrows. Despite this, some breeding habitat remains to the north and north-west of Socorro's summit, where introduced animals have yet to ravage.
The current mature population is estimated between 249 and 999 birds. Due to the presence of these threats, it has been classified as critically endangered.
Townsend's Shearwater is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Townsend's Shearwater, Wikidata item Q1263398. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
